Comparison

RSS vs Tidings

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

RSS

Consolidate your favorite websites into a single, streamlined feed reader. Enjoy fast navigation, automatic feed detection, and offline translation for articles. Keep your reading organized with folders and sync your progress across devices.

Highlights
  • Automatic feed detection
  • Organize feeds with folders
  • Fast article navigation
  • Background refresh & push notifications
  • Bookmark articles
  • iCloud sync across devices
  • Offline auto-translation
Read full description

RSS - Article Reader is a clean, fast feed reader that brings all your favorite websites together in one place. Designed to feel right at home on your iPhone. A clean interface, smooth performance, and a reading experience built for speed. • Wide Format Support Supports every version of RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed. Just paste a website URL and feeds are detected automatically. • Organize with Folders Group your feeds into folders to keep your subscriptions tidy and easy to navigate. • Read Through Articles Fast Navigate between articles and mark as read with a single tap. Every button is placed for effortless reading flow. • Never Miss an Update Background refresh and push notifications keep you informed when your favorite sites publish new content. • Bookmark Articles Save articles to read later and revisit them anytime. • Sync Across Devices iCloud keeps your subscriptions, read status, and bookmarks in sync. Switch phones without missing a beat. • Easy Migration Switch from another reader with OPML import and export. • Auto-translate foreign articles Translate articles with one tap from the detail view. The feature is powered by Apple's translation engine and works offline too.

About

Tidings

Features
Read full description

Take back control of what you read. Tidings turns the sources you choose into a calm, focused daily news feed—without an account, ads, or cross-app advertising tracking. TODAY'S BRIEF Catch up quickly with a concise digest of the stories most worth your time. Use the built-in offline summary or connect an OpenAI-compatible service for smarter summaries. KEYWORD RADAR Follow topics, companies, and people—not just publications. Tidings gathers matching stories from all your feeds and can notify you when something new appears. YOUR PERSONAL NEWSPAPER Turn today's subscriptions into a beautifully typeset morning or evening front page. Share it as one polished image, complete with a QR code that helps friends discover Tidings. SHARE ANY ARTICLE Turn a worthwhile story into a polished portrait card with its headline, excerpt, source, reading time, and an App Store QR code—perfect for sharing with friends. READ LATER Save articles to a dedicated inbox without mixing them with favorites. Saved items survive feed refreshes and automatic cleanup, while bilingual reading-time estimates help you pick the right article for the moment. READ YOUR WAY Fetch full text when a feed only provides an excerpt, keep it available offline, listen with text-to-speech, resume long articles where you stopped, and move through your unread queue without distractions. ALSO INCLUDED RSS and Atom discovery, batch subscription import, folders, full-text search, article thumbnails, OPML import and export, broken-feed detection, light and dark themes, background refresh, and local-first storage. Your subscriptions and article reading history stay on your device. Optional usage analytics is off by default. If enabled, it sends a random installation identifier and limited usage/error-count events, never article content, subscriptions, searches, URLs, API keys or error details. You can turn it off at any time in Settings.

Screenshots

RSS4 screens
Tidings4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Tidings at 17.0 against RSS's 26.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

RSS ships an update every 4 weeks, Tidings every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 5, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard1 real difference · 9 level
RSS versus Tidings: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterRSSTidings
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews50.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 4 weeksEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size15 MB2 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperClimb AppBeijing Pengcheng Technology Co., Ltd.

In-app purchases

None

RSS

No in-app purchases

None

Tidings

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is RSS free?
RSS is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Tidings free?
Tidings is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do RSS or Tidings have ads?
Neither RSS nor Tidings shows ads.
Which is updated more often, RSS or Tidings?
RSS ships an update every 4 weeks, and Tidings every 3 weeks. Most recently, RSS was updated on November 5, 2026 and Tidings on October 29, 2026.

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